Josenhans Fly Fishing Newsletter

27 05 2010

Tangier Sound

Time for another report from beautiful Tangier Sound. I fished Saturday, along with the past three days with mixed results. Monday was a picture perfect skinny water rockfish day, with overcast conditions all morning. The fish didn’t disappoint, as we had terrific striper action in four feet of water on poppers, light spinning and fly tackle.

Plenty of rockfish from two to six pounds came in the boat, and one BIG fish was hooked, briefly showed itself, and promptly released itself before we could get an accurate estimate of size. Let’s just say it brought back memories of the blowups that you see fishing topwater on the Susquehanna Flats. All-in-all, it was a great morning, and we left them biting to stop in Tylerton, Smith Island at Drum Point Market for a crab cake sandwich. Pictured to the right is Gene Jones with a Monday morning rockfish.

We tried a few places after lunch, but the tide had slacked and so did the fishing.

To the left is Maurice Klein with a nice fish caught on a Stillwater Smack-it! popper.

Gene with the day’s first fly caught rock on a 7 wt.

Tuesday brought bright sunshine and slow fishing. Since the specks have decided to avoid my boat it has pretty much been all rockfish, and the shallow water kind don’t much like the sun in their eyes. We traveled to the deeper waters of the bay proper for awhile and caught a few there, but nothing to write home about. Another crab cake lunch – this time at Ruke’s in Ewell – and then we decided to take a brief jaunt to Holland Island.

I don’t think this house was affected by the real estate collapse. Not a fish at Holland as the cow nose rays had made a complete mess of the flats. Dirty water as far as the eye could see. Still a great day on the water.

Wednesday dawned with a plan to avoid the rays. We managed pretty well and caught enough blues and rock to make a good day of it. Not the bigger fish of Monday, but a pleasant day on the bay with enough action so you had to pay attention. Should see the bluefish action increase any day and most are expected to be in the 2 – 4 pound range. Looks like the shallow water striper bite is shaping up to be a dawn or dusk proposition – at least for the bigger fish. Maybe I need to start setting the alarm a bit earlier. Barry Portnoy fooled the fish on the right.

Matt Roach had the hot fly on Wednesday – a yellow/white clouser.

I will be fishing out of the Little Choptank some in the coming weeks, as I hear some top water action may be starting up in the mid-bay. I’ll keep you posted. Tight lines till next week…

Josenhans Fly Fishing Blog